When We Shed Civilization

Chapter 26

The bike's seat was long enough for two. Beth climbed on behind the driver and held on to one of the woman's arms to steady herself.

Whitesnake grasped Beth's hand and set it on her midriff. "Hold on tight, I said. And I won't repeat it. If you don't, you'll come to regret it." Next, she kicked something at the belly of the machine, and its engine came alive.

With a deafening roar, the bike sprang forward.

Beth clung to Whitesnake's hard body as they rode into the night, veering left and right to navigate the obstacles littering the street. A regular car could never have passed here, but their bike was small and nimble enough to avoid the discarded remains of the tech age.

The sudden turns and the unsteady headlights made her dizzy, and at some point, she just closed her eyes and pressed herself against Whitesnake's back. But she couldn't shut out the irritated growl and untamed vibrations of the engines, nor their oily stench, nor the smell of old leather and stale sweat.

When the mad ride finally ended, minutes or hours later, Beth glanced over Whitesnake's shoulder. Before them, a wall of brick barred the alley. A wide gate in its midst stood closed. A battlement ran along its top, and a man watched them from behind it.

"It's us," Whitesnake called over the irregular beat of the idling engines. "Open up."

"And who's your cargo?" The man asked.

"Them are guests."

The man hesitated. "Guests?"

"Yes, guests." Impatience or irritation rang in Whitesnake's voice. "Open up, already."

The man shrugged and left the ramparts, entering a building next to them. Moments later, the gate opened. When Whitesnake accelerated towards it, Beth almost fell from her seat.

On the other side, the alley widened into an open space framed by a long building on one side and some tall, fat, cylindric tanks on the other.

Ahead, people stood and sat around a fire, about a dozen of them.

Whitesnake stopped the bike at a contraption of metal tubes between two of the tanks and killed the engine. "Here we are."

Beth dismounted as quickly as she could, happy to place her feet on unmoving ground. Her knees shook.

Burt laughed at something Ozzy said and walked over to her. "Cool ride."

Not trusting her voice, Beth just shrugged and watched Ozzy grabbing a hose dangling from a vessel at the top of the metal contraption. He operated a clamp at its end and began filling his bike's tank.

Gasoline.

"Come, you've gotta meet Jethro." Whitesnake tugged at Beth's sleeve, urging her to follow.

Together with Burt, they approached the fire. The people surrounding it watched the newcomers with unveiled curiosity. Ragged clothes, greasy hair, and unsmiling lips seemed parts of the common attire here.

Some of them held plates, bowls, or cups. They must have been eating.

Without a sound, the group parted to admit them to the fire.

A chill crept up Beth's spine even though the evening was still warm.

Right across the flames, a man wearing a long, brownish coat rose from the only chair in sight. Even erect, he stood shorter than most, but those next to him made room as he set his hands on his hips. Gray laced the oily auburn of his long, matted hair. The chill in Beth's spine intensified as his gaze took her in. One of his eyes was almost entirely white—probably unseeing. The other one—its color impossible to guess in the firelight—moved along her face and body. Yet it was the blind one's scrutiny that made her shiver.

She suppressed a sigh of relief as the man turned his attention to Whitesnake.

"Please introduce us." His gravelly voice held a lot of bass for someone so small.

"Them are Beth and Burt. We've picked'em up in the East district, fighting some dogs. With a gun. I offered them shelter for the night."

Jethro had another stern look at his guests, but then a smile found his lips. "Welcome, then. My name's Jethro Tull. But everyone just calls me Jethro." He grasped the arm of a girl next to him—she looked younger than Beth, somewhere in her teens with an unruly mane of red hair. "Pat, get more food, water, and spirits. And you," he looked back at them, "take a seat."

With that, he sat.

"Thank you, Jethro," Burt said and lowered himself to the ground.

Beth followed his example, sat down, and tried to relax. Avoiding Jethro's one-eyed stare, she glanced at Whitesnake next to her. The woman looked much older now in the bright light of the campfire. The wrinkles in the corners of her eyes told a tale of smiles in the past, but her lips were pressed into a thin line.

"You must be hungry and thirsty," Jethro said as the girl returned with a basket, setting it down on the ground at his side. He pulled a bottle from it and handed it to her. "Pour it for the four of us."

While everyone watched in silence, Pat produced four glasses and filled them one by one. Obviously understanding who were "the four of us," she handed the first two to Burt and Beth, the next one to Jethro, and the last one to Whitesnake.

When the girl was done, Jethro raised his glass. "To our guests."

As he drank, Beth sniffed her glass. The fumes rising from it stung her nostrils and brought tears to her eyes.

"You've got to drink it all," Ozzy said. He sat on Burt's other side. "It's a... rital..." He looked at Whitesnake.

"... a ritual of welcome," she said.

Beth held her breath as she drank, and the liquid seared its way down her throat.

Burt finished his drink before her. "Strong stuff."

"Strong stuff fer strong men," Jethro said.

Beth blinked away the tears the drink had driven into her eyes to find Jethro grinning at her.

He gestured at the redheaded girl at his side. "Now that we've quenched our guests' thirst, they have truly arrived. More drinks fer everyone! And music."

With that, the mood around the fire lightened. The people resumed their eating, and some held out cups and bowls, waiting for Pat to fill them.

"We should have guests more often," someone said. Others laughed.

While more bottles of drink were produced, the girl moved to an open-sided shed at one side of the square, across from the tanks. She entered it, and a light came on in its single window.

It wasn't the soft light of a candle. The sudden way it had lit up and its white, steady glow were unmistakable—it was electric.

Beth's grandpa had told her the only places with electricity were the gated villages.

He must have been wrong.

Before Beth could ask about it, the soft notes of a piano poured from two large, black boxes on both sides of the shed. Slow and tentative at first, but then an electric guitar joined them, and together they gained volume and strength, drowning the babbling of the gang. Drums introduced a throaty voice chanting about a shuffling madness.

Beth loved the cultivated, thoughtful composers dating back to even before the age of tech, but this music was something else entirely. Unfettered and violent, dangerous and passionate—yet its dark tune blended perfectly with the wild lights playing on the faces of the people around the fire. And it resonated with the heat the drink had planted within her.